Following identification of the PLA 54th Research Institute (54th RI) as a Chinese military cyberattack research entity, further research was conducted by Wapack Labs to identify its leadership and key researchers. The current 54th RI Director was not found. Maj Gen Hao Yeli is a former Director, but she has advanced to become Deputy Director of the PLA Fourth Department, under which the 54th RI is subordinated. Maj Gen Lu Yueguang appears to be the current Deputy Director of the 54th RI.
A review of academic work by 54th RI personnel identified 37 articles and 8 patents that reflected research on cyberattack techniques. Two authors—Zhao Xinjie and Guo Shize—were by far the most prolific over the last ten years, accounting for 26 and 32 articles and patents related to cyberattack, respectively. Four other authors—Xiao Qixue, Wu Zhiyong, Wang Xiaojuan, and Niu Wei—had written four to eight articles or patents each.
Most of the papers found, described techniques for an attack against cryptographic protection systems. These included side-channel attacks, cache timing attacks, algebraic fault attacks, and cube attacks. If these publications are representative of the work being done inside the 54th RI, then the term “attack” appears to mean an attack on a cryptosystem to extract its keys, rather than a destructive attack. Papers on cryptosystem attack technologies by the 54th RI authors were still being published in 2016-2018, indicating that development of these techniques is part of China’s present-day cyber strategy.
An archive of related reporting can be found in the Red Sky Alliance portal.
